


There and Back Again

by nikkiRA



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Don't Examine This Too Closely, M/M, Road Trips, i googled literally everything about this okay i don't even LIVE in america
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6744748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan noticed him at first because Adam Parrish stuck out like a sore thumb. At first he had wondered why he had even come, but he should have known better than anyone (sitting in a car next to a guy he hardly knew embarking on a totally unnecessary road trip) just how impossible it was to say no to Gansey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this is all from google because i don't even LIVE in America I have no idea what roads there are so just go with the flow and don't pay too much attention to the road part of the road trip lmao

“I need you to do me a favour.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is yet!”

“It doesn’t matter. You have your politics voice on. That means it’s bad.”

Gansey’s sigh was all he needed to know he was right.

“You know Adam Parrish, right?”

He says “vaguely.” What he means is ‘obviously.’

“I’m still in Florida, and I will be for my birthday. I know Helen is planning me a surprise party, because this family sucks at keeping secrets, and I would like for him to be able to attend, except he doesn’t have the money to get a plane ticket. I would have no problem buying one for him except Adam is weirdly proud –”

“Most poor people are, it’s all they have.”

Gansey makes an ungodly noise. Ronan doesn’t actually believe this – he just really likes that noise.

“SO,” he continues loudly. “Helen, uh…”

Gansey sounds nervous, which concerns Ronan. He’s really not going to like whatever Helen had said.

“Helen told him that you were driving here because you didn’t like flying. And that he could catch a ride with you. Because you were driving, anyway.”

Ronan says, “No.”

Gansey doesn’t say anything.

Ronan says, “No.”

Gansey doesn’t say anything.

Ronan says, “Fucking _no,_ Gansey! That is thirteen fucking hours! Thirteen hours stuck in a car with some guy I barely fucking know!”

“I know. I’ll owe you massively.”

“This is slightly more than an IOU.”

“Please. This would really mean a lot to me.”

“Fuck you, Dick.” Because it would take a stronger man than him to say no to Richard Gansey III, and Ronan had yet to meet him. “I fucking hate you, Gansey.”

“Thank you, Ronan.” Gansey’s voice is thick with gratitude.

“Whatever,” he mutters.

* * *

Adam Parrish is waiting outside when Ronan drives up, fumbling with the straps on his bag. He looks up at the BMW as it pulls up beside him, and then at the surly looking man sitting inside.

“Hi. Thanks for letting me tag along.”

Ronan makes a noncommittal noise. He makes it a point not to lie – he just doesn’t always volunteer information.

“Yeah. Do you know how to drive a stick?”

Adam shakes his head, and Ronan sighs. Thirteen straight hours for him, then.

“Great. Let’s fucking go.”

* * *

Ronan first met Adam Parrish at Gansey’s 18th birthday party. Gansey was generally not one for birthday parties, but his family had decided that he was becoming a man, and such a milestone had to be celebrated.

(Coincidentally, this was also when Gansey met Blue Sargent, but that was a whole other can of worms.)

Gansey had met Adam because he was determined to continue to drive his Camaro even though it had resulted in about four and a half near death experiences. Adam was the mechanic Gansey had taken his car to. The rest, as they say, is history.

Ronan noticed him at first because Adam Parrish stuck out like a sore thumb. At first he had wondered why he had even come, but he should have known better than anyone (sitting in a car next to a guy he hardly knew embarking on a totally unnecessary road trip) just how impossible it was to say no to Gansey.

Gansey had introduced them – “my two closest friends” – and then he left to drool over one of the waitresses (three years later and a ring on her finger and still Gansey has not stopped drooling). Ronan had offered him a beer; Adam had declined. That was pretty much it, that time, which was why Ronan had been so confused as to why, when he got home, he couldn’t seem to think about anything other than Adam Parrish’s hands.

* * *

“Get your foot off my dashboard.”

“My foot isn’t on your dashboard.”

Ronan looks pointedly at the foot that is tapping on the dashboard of his car, which is highly dangerous, since he is driving. Adam’s leg is crossed over his other, and while his foot technically isn’t on the dashboard, it’s still hitting it with each tap of his foot.

Adam looks at him in disbelief. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, as he puts his foot down.

“Jesus Christ couldn’t put his feet on my dashboard either, Parrish.”

* * *

The second time Ronan saw Adam Parrish was a few months after Gansey’s 18th. Gansey had brought him back to Monmouth for the first time to show him around without telling Ronan, which is why he emerged half naked.

Gansey hadn’t seemed to notice. Parrish definitely had.

“Um.”

“Ronan! You remember Adam, right?”

Ronan had swallowed and tried not to stare at Adam’s hands. He didn’t know what it was with him and hands. “Mechanic,” he had said gruffly. “’Scuse me.” He had ducked into his room, thrown on a shirt, settled himself down a bit, and then went back out. He had thrown himself down on the couch beside Adam and switched the television on, throwing his legs up on the table. Adam had watched him for a moment before asking if there was anything to drink.

“Bathroom,” he had said.

“Um,” Adam said again.

“Fridge is in the bathroom,” he clarified.

“Is that sanitary?”

He shrugged. “Do you want a drink or not?”

 After that Gansey had started creaming himself over ley lines and shit and Adam had looked politely interested, and Ronan had taken advantage of this by studying Adam Parrish’s profile and trying to figure out why the hell this kept happening. They met a few times after that, and each time was the same – slightly awkward, a little forced, and each time Ronan found himself craving more and more.

* * *

“Aren’t you going a little fast?”

Honestly, Ronan was going at least 20mph slower than he normally did solely for Adam’s sake. “Not really.”

“How are we supposed to get to Florida if your car gets taken away?”

“We hitchhike,” Ronan says, but he slows it down a bit. Anyone else he would have told to fuck off and that they could walk if they had a problem, but Ronan is beginning to notice that his rules apparently don’t apply to Adam Parrish.

“Thank you,” he says. “I don’t think anyone would pick us up if we hitchhiked. You kind of look like a gang member.”

Ronan snorts. “I’d look a lot less threatening next to your pretty face, Parrish.”

Silence follows these words, and Ronan realizes with horror what he had said. Before Adam can say anything he reaches out and turns the music dial up, drowning out any attempted conversation. Adam lets this continue for a few songs until the Squash song comes on.

Adam reaches out and turns it down. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s music, Parrish.”

“Are you sure?”

“You insult my driving, my appearance, my music. I’m starting to get the feeling you don’t like me, Parrish.”

“I barely know you,” he says, which Ronan notices is not an answer.

“Good thing we have twelve more hours together, then, isn’t it?”

Ronan risks a glance sideways at Adam to check his reaction to this, and is relieved to see a slight smile curling at the edges of his lips.

* * *

It is just approaching hour four when Ronan turns the music down and asks, “Are you hungry?”

Adam pauses. “Not really. We can stop, though. There’s a rest area in three miles.”

The rest area consists of a gas station, a Wendy’s, and a Taco Bell. Ronan gets a burger and a drink and sits down across from Adam, who has a bag of chips from the vending machine. Ronan eyes them.

“Are you not getting lunch?”

Adam shrugs. “Not all that hungry.”

“We won’t be eating for hours, Parrish.”

He shrugs again. Ronan remembers what Gansey had said about Adam and his pride and considers how to play this.

“Don’t tell me you forgot your wallet and you’re planning on pulling some doe eyed sad story scam to get me to buy you dinner.”

Adam snorts. “I didn’t forget my wallet. I have gas money for you.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “I don’t need fucking gas money.”

“You’re driving me to _Florida –”_

“I’m driving me to Florida, Parrish. I have to get there too.” He doesn’t mention that he wouldn’t be driving if it weren’t for him, but lying by omission isn’t really lying.

“But –”

“Take your fucking gas money and shove it up your ass. Or buy a burger. I don’t care which one, but I’m not taking it.”

Adam sighs, but he seems able to tell which fights he can win and which are losing battles, since he stands up and heads in the direction of the Wendy’s.

“Are you going to get a burger or to shove it up your ass?” Ronan calls after him. Adam spins around and walks backwards.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he shouts back.

Ronan smirks and turns back to his burger.

* * *

Half an hour back on the road and Ronan says, “When’s the next rest stop?”

Adam frowns. “Probably not for a while. Why? What do you need now?”

Ronan clears his throat. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

Adam makes an exasperated sound in the back of his throat. “We were _just_ at a rest stop!”

Ronan picks up the large fountain drink from the drink holder and waves it in front of Adam’s face. Adam bats his hand away and shakes his head.

“We’ll have to pull off the highway. No more drinking for you.”

“It’s my fucking car, Parrish.”

“We’re going to get lost.”

“We’re not going to get lost.”

He takes the next exit and finds a gas station easily, not far from the highway. “See?” He tells Adam, who rolls his eyes. He stays in the car while Ronan runs in to piss, and when he gets back in he says, “We barely lost ten minutes.”

He heads back to the highway, and they immediately find a problem. Ronan swears.

For some reason, they can’t get back on going southbound. There is an entrance going north, but that doesn’t help them.

Adam doesn’t say a damn word, which is somehow worse.

“Why is there only one fucking exit? Who fucking designed this? Parrish, check your phone and tell me how to get back to the fucking highway.”

“I don’t have a phone,” Adam says breezily. Ronan thinks he might be enjoying himself.

“Fucking – then take my phone, Parrish!” He takes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Adam, who fiddles with it for a little before saying, “We have to go south to get to the next exit.”

“Which way are we going now?”

“Not south.”

“I fucking hate Gansey,” Ronan mutters.

* * *

They are back on the road and approaching hour six and Ronan’s wrist feels like it is about to fall off. He changes lanes and takes the first exit they see.

“What are we doing now?”

“You whine a lot for somebody getting a free ride to Florida.”

“I didn’t _ask_ for it to be free, I offered you money.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “I am going to teach you how to drive my car.”

Adam stares at him in disbelief. “You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?”

“You’re out of your fucking mind.”

“I cannot do this for seven more hours, Parrish, so either you learn or we sit in this parking lot until I can feel my wrist again.”

Adam’s mouth is hanging open. “Oh my God,” he mutters, rubbing at his eye, but he says, “Fine, all right, but I will not be held accountable if I crash your stupid car.”

“Yes you fucking will, and don’t call my car stupid.”

They switch seats. Adam stares at the steering wheel.

“Jesus Hell, Parrish. Do you know how to drive a car?”

“I work with cars.”

“Is that a yes?”

“That’s a yes.”

“It’s not that fucking difficult. Gansey told me you have scholarships coming out of your ass, I think you can manage a stick.”

“Why are you so preoccupied with my ass?”

Ronan chooses not to answer this. Instead he starts teaching Adam Parrish how to drive a stick shift, and if he has to keep touching his hand to do so, that’s just the way it has to be.

Despite his protests Adam is a quick learner and he picks it up rather quickly. Ronan can’t help but feel a little bit proud of this, even though the lesson was about 80% Adam Parrish being intelligent and 20% Ronan yelling _not like that, fucking – like that!_

“Just give me like, an hour and I’ll take over again. Drive carefully. Don’t fuck up my car.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You’ll just buy another. What’s another shiny BMW to you?”

Ronan thinks this is probably supposed to be derogatory. He glares out the window. “This was my father’s car, Parrish. Be fucking careful.”

Adam is quiet for a minute before he says, in a low voice, “Sorry. I’ll be careful.”

“Thank you,” Ronan mutters. He settles against the window and keeps an eye on the gear shift, mostly because he wants to make sure Parrish is using it properly. Honestly. It’s not his fault he has to look at Adam’s hand to accomplish this.

He fucking loves Gansey.

* * *

He must fall asleep, because he wakes up almost two hours later groggy, with a dry mouth and a red line on his forehead from sleeping on the window. He rubs at his eyes.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You’re surprisingly easier to deal with when you’re unconscious.”

“Ha fucking ha,” he mutters. “There’s a gas station coming up, pull off there and give me my car back.”

“You’re the one who told me to drive it,” Adam mumbles, but he does as he is told. The gas station is accompanied by a McDonald’s, and Ronan takes a quick detour through the drive thru to get himself a drink. Adam gets one, too, and Ronan accepts the proffered two dollars without a fight, even though he doesn’t fucking need two dollars.

“You’re going to have to piss again,” Adam says under his breath as they head back onto the road.

“I am sorry my natural bodily functions are an inconvenience to you, Parrish,” Ronan says, cutting in front of a minivan. Adam braces himself against the door.

To his surprise, Adam smiles, genuinely, and Ronan is astonished at the intensity of it, the way it changes his face, transforms him, not into someone different, just a different version of Adam Parrish. Ronan wants to stare, but he needs to concentrate on more important things. Like the road.

After a few minutes of silence that Ronan finds, surprisingly, not at all awkward, Adam eventually says, very quietly, “Gansey told me about your father.”

“Of fucking course he did.”

“Not like – he didn’t really tell me anything, really,” Adam quickly backtracks. “Just that, you know. He died.”

Ronan does not answer this. Gansey had also told Ronan about _Adam’s_ father, but Ronan was not going to mention this. Gansey had said that Adam had moved out, and that was that. Ronan has a funny feeling that that was not that, but Gansey was a different species sometimes and Ronan loved him for it.

“Everyone dies,” he says flippantly. Adam makes an annoyed sound, and Ronan knows that whatever sympathy he had held for him has flown out the window. Ronan prefers it that way.

Adam takes off his sweater, balls it up, and places it against the window, which he then rests his head on. He closes his eyes and Ronan turns down the music, and in a few minutes his breathing has evened out and Adam Parrish is asleep. Ronan looks briefly at his wrists, lying limply on his lap, before turning his eyes back to the road.

It is almost hour ten.

* * *

Adam wakes up in the middle of hour eleven, takes a sip of his drink, and then says, “I want to apologize.”

“What do you want.”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

Ronan laughs. Adam stares at him in bemusement, as if he couldn’t quite believe that sound had escaped from him.

“We are going to be late for Gansey’s party,” he says, but he switches lanes anyway. “Can you wait six miles?”

“Yeah.”

They stop at another rest area. Adam runs in, and then Ronan decides he had better go, too. When he gets back Adam is leaning against his car with his arms crossed, watching people as they come and go. Ronan unlocks the car and the noise seems to jerk Adam out of whatever world he had been in.

Gansey calls about forty minutes later. Adam picks up.

“Hi,” he says. “We’re running a little late. We lost about an hour and a half. Ronan taught me how to drive his car. Yes, I know. I don’t know, you’ve known him longer than me.”

“What is he saying?”

“He wants to know what’s wrong with you. Oh, you mean literally,” he says back into the phone. “His wrist was hurting.”

“Fucking asshole, Parrish,” Ronan says with a laugh.

“Well Ronan drives like a maniac so it shouldn’t be that long, assuming we don’t die there on the way. Gansey says we’re not allowed to die on his birthday.”

“It’s not his birthday.”

“He says it’s not your birthday. Yeah, yeah, we’ll be there in a couple hours. Bye.”

 Adam shifts his seat back, pulls his leg up beneath him, and takes another bag of chips out of the pocket of his sweater. He opens it and offers it to Ronan.

“You’re gonna get chip crumbs all over my car, Parrish.”

“Does that mean you don’t want any?”

Ronan takes some with a grunt.

* * *

They are only about half an hour out and the playlist repeats again, and the Murder Squash song comes on once again. Ronan sings along like usual until he hears a low humming beside him.

“Parrish,” he says, his mouth curling up. “Are you humming?”

“It’s not _my_ fault that I’ve heard this fucking song thirty times in the past fourteen hours,” he says angrily. Ronan laughs and starts singing at the top of his lungs. Adam covers his ears.

“LYNCH.”

Ronan grins and Adam shakes his head, but Ronan thinks he isn’t actually as annoyed as he likes to pretend.

* * *

The hotel where the ‘surprise party’ is taking place is about twenty minutes off the highway. Adam reads directions off of Ronan’s phone and he pulls into a parking spot beside Gansey’s Camaro.

“My fucking ass hurts,” he mumbles. Adam stands up, stretches and yawns, and Ronan tries not to stare when his shirt rides up, and probably fails.  

“I need a nap,” he says.

“You’re shit out of luck, Parrish, we’re already late for this party.”

Adam sighs and shakes his head before rummaging in a bag in Ronan’s back seat and pulling out a nicer shirt than the one he had been wearing. Ronan turns away as he takes off his sweater and shirt. He cleans up nicely. 

“Is that what you’re wearing?” He asks Ronan, who just nods.

“Who the fuck do I have to impress?” He says. Adam looks like he wants to say something but instead he just heads into the hotel. Ronan follows after.

Gansey catches sight of them almost immediately and heads their way, grinning widely at them. Unsurprisingly, Ronan feels underdressed. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t care.

“You’re both here! At the party I totally didn’t know was happening! What a surprise!”

Ronan rolls his eyes while Gansey and Adam bump fists. “Sorry we’re late,” Adam says. “Ronan had to pee every twenty five minutes.”

Ronan goes to grab a drink.

He nurses a beer for a few minutes until Gansey finds him again, this time by himself. “Thanks, man,” he says gratefully. “I really appreciate it.”

Ronan answers this with a glare and another drink of his beer.

“Oh, come on. It couldn’t be that bad.”

Ronan has to concede to that.

“Plus it’s about time you two got to know each other.”

“Yeah, well, thirty hours together are sure to do that.”

Gansey claps him on the back. “I’m really happy you’re here, Ronan.”

“Bite me, Dick.”

Gansey laughs, claps him on the back once more, and then excuses himself. Ronan finds his eyes wandering. He sees Gansey’s parents, and Helen, who was the one who got him into this whole mess. Adam is with Gansey, who is introducing him to someone Ronan does not know and does not care to know. Adam has a political face on. Ronan assumes he’s trying to make contacts.

Someone lightly bumps him with their hip and he turns around to see Blue Sargent, still short, still weirdly dressed, still drinking nothing but a water.

“Watch where you’re going, weirdo.”

“Surly as ever, I see,” she says amiably. He snorts.

“Are you ever going to drink anything harder than water, Sargent?”

“I am underage,” she says.

“We’re in a room full of politicians and rich people. Underage drinking is nothing to these people. I guarantee you at least one of them has someone tied up in the trunk of their car.”

Blue hits him. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny. Where’s Gansey?”

“Talking to some rich guy.”

“That doesn’t really narrow it down, Sargent. 99% of the people here are in the 1%.”

“That was clever.”

“I have been known to have my moments.”

Blue smiles and hip bumps him again.


	2. And Back Again

Adam Parrish is having something of a crisis.

It is also _really fucking_ hot in this goddamn hotel. Really fucking hot, and he is sweating in his stupid suit, and he has had a political smile plastered to his face for about forty five straight minutes, and Gansey is next to him introducing him to all these stupid rich people, and his face hurts, and he’s been suppressing his accent the entire time. And it’s hot – has he mentioned that? Also he hates rich people. Like, a lot.

Adam has worked hard for a lot of things in his life. And he doesn’t like to pull the ‘my life is hard feel bad for me’ card, but when you stack the things up, it’s a pretty high stack. It starts off with a trailer park, and an apathetic mother, and a father who drank too much and cared too little and was very liberal with the use of his fists. It has drug store concealer stacked underneath a full ride scholarship to the second best private school in the area (Aglionby’s was not a full scholarship and as much as Adam would have preferred it he figured his plan to get out of the trailer park would be for naught if he had a nervous breakdown at eighteen because of overwork). It’s hiding his paystubs from his father. It’s a small apartment above St. Agnes’. It’s a letter filled with scholarships to the best schools in the country. It’s Richard Gansey III standing in the garage with a beaten down Camaro and his best smile on his face.

It’s thirteen – no, almost fifteen straight hours in a car with Ronan Lynch.

Adam has never had a need for friends, but he has this really weird feeling that things are working out that way anyway.

And here’s the strange thing – Adam is standing beside Gansey, who is introducing him to all the people Adam should be building relationships with, people Adam will need, and all he can think about is Ronan Lynch’s hand grabbing the back of Adam’s and him screaming _put it in second gear Parrish Jesus fuck!_

He clues in back to the present and realizes people are staring at him.

“Adam?” Gansey says. Adam clears his throat and smiles again.

“Sorry. I was just – it’s very hot in here, isn’t it?” He tries to laugh, and is relieved when the couple he is talking to smile.

“Yes, it is. You know I was telling –”

Adam nods, makes his excuses, and backs away. Gansey shoots him a worried look but Adam just shakes his head. He walks away and heads back outside, grateful for the air. He breathes in and out a few times, leaning against the wall, before heading back inside.

He looks for Gansey and finds his girlfriend – fiancée – instead.

“Blue,” he says, sitting down at the table across from her and grateful for some kind of familiar face. She smiles at him.

“Hi, Adam. Are you having as fun a time as I am?”

He laughs derisively. “Are you saying you’re not enjoying the parade of rich pricks?”

“Hey,” comes a voice from behind him. “Watch who you’re calling a rich prick.”

“It’s the biggest prick around,” Blue says, although there is friendly familiarity in her voice.

“Watch that mouth of yours, Sargent, or I’ll dump this drink over your head.”

Blue takes the drink Ronan offers her and Ronan sits down beside her. Ronan nods at him. “Parrish,” he says in greeting. Adam remembers the laugh he had heard, how it had sounded so strange, coming from someone who always looked so angry. It was the laugh of someone who did so often and easily. The laugh that belonged to a Ronan Lynch who didn’t exist anymore.

 _He was different before his father,_ Gansey had said. Adam hadn’t known him then and he barely knew him now but that laugh had been insight into another world. Another person.

“I can’t believe you went thirteen hours in a car. With Ronan. With Ronan _driving.”_

“Fourteen and a half,” Adam amends. Ronan kicks his feet up, stretching them in front of him and placing them on the chair beside Adam.

“I’m a goddamn delight,” he says. Blue gives Adam a meaningful look and he laughs.

“Jane!” Comes Gansey’s voice. He takes the seat next to Adam and steals one of the finger sandwiches Ronan had brought back. “I have people who want to meet you.”

Blue plasters a smile on her face. “Great!”

Gansey smiles gratefully. “You don’t have to pretend to be excited, I know that you’re not, but you have to meet them anyway.”

“This is what I get for consorting with rich people,” she mutters, standing up. Gansey gets up, placing a quick kiss to her forehead before nodding goodbye to Adam and Ronan and leading her away. Adam watches them go.

“Do you think he’ll keep calling her Jane even after they’re married?”

Ronan smirks. “What name do you think he’ll say during their vows?”

“‘I, Gansey, take you Jane.’”

Ronan doesn’t answer this; instead he just stares. “What?” Adam eventually snaps.

“Nothing,” Ronan says. “You just don’t normally talk like that.”

“Actually,” he says, trying not to sound self-conscious and stifling his accent once again. “I don’t normally talk like this.”

“You don’t have to hide your fucking accent just to fit in with some rich assholes, Parrish.”

Adam resists the urge to roll his eyes. Rich people were always so quick to give advice, as if Adam had the leisure of being able to listen to them.

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re one of the rich assholes.”

Ronan does not get offended by this, because he is Ronan. He just eats another finger sandwich and shrugs, and Adam does not feel guilty about his comment, which is nice. He could never say anything like that to Gansey, God forbid. There was something freeing about being around Ronan that he had never felt around anyone else.

The thing was there were a few Adam Parrish’s. There was the Adam Parrish who lived at the trailer park, the Adam Parrish at school, the Adam Parrish who worked his ass off and the Adam Parrish who was friends with Richard Gansey III, who plastered a smile on his face and pretended. That was what his life was, pretending. Nonstop pretending. He even pretended with Blue – he let his accent slide back and he made jokes about rich people as if he were just one more nameless Henrietta face.

But there was none of that here. Adam didn’t really know who or what he really was, but he had a very strange and not entirely pleasant feeling that the way to figure that out was through Ronan Lynch.

His head is crowded. He reaches out and grabs a sandwich off of Ronan’s plate. “What time are we leaving?”

Ronan shrugs. “Are you working tomorrow?”

Adam shakes his head. He had taken off the entire weekend for this party.

“Check out’s at ten,” Ronan says, stretching his arms over his head. Adam stares.

“I wasn’t aware we were staying the night.”

“You think I want to fucking drive for twenty six goddamn hours with only a two hour nap?”

Now that he thinks about it, it does seem fairly obvious. And it’s not like he can be annoyed at Gansey or Ronan for not telling him this, when it should have been obvious. He’ll just have to find a Motel 6 or something.

As if he had read his mind, Ronan says, “And don’t start shitting your pants, Parrish, the Gansey’s have rented out the hotel for everyone. Even me.”

Adam looks around at the guests. “For _everyone?_ ” He says in disbelief.

The thing with money is that it’s an entirely different language to Adam. Logically he knew what a million dollars meant, but the sum had no real meaning to him. And he knew that the Gansey’s fortune didn’t peak at a single million. So when Ronan tells him that the Gansey’s had rented out the hotel for their guests, part of Adam thinks, _that sounds like something the Gansey’s could do,_ and another part of him thinks, _what the fuck does that even mean?_

“Mostly everyone,” Ronan amends.

But anyway, back to the crisis.

The crisis is this: it is a room full of people he doesn’t know, a tie that he had tied too tightly but was too embarrassed to ask someone to untie it for him, and a hotel that is overheated. It is a plan that Adam had for his life, a plan that did not in any way shape or form involve Henrietta. And this dumb party filled with dumb rich people is sure to help that, because once he graduates college he’s basically right where he had started, just with even more debt. So he should be out there, next to Gansey, meeting people and making contacts for himself. He should be using this party. Using these people.

And yet here he is, and he had networked for maybe a grand total of four and a half minutes before making his excuses and running away, and now here he is, and he is not moving. The crisis is Ronan Lynch’s eyes, and that laugh he had heard, and the way he called Adam pretty without meaning to, and his dumb music and his hand gripping Adam’s and yelling _do you understand what gears are, Parrish?_ It’s the fact that he had gotten into the car dreading the next thirteen hours but four hours in and he found that he couldn’t stop looking at Ronan Lynch as he drove, the music far too loud and the car far too fast, but a quirk in his lips and his hands drumming on the steering wheel and Adam couldn’t look away.

When Gansey had started dating Blue Adam had had an earth shattering revelation when he couldn’t figure out if he was more jealous of Gansey or of Blue, and he was forced to go back and re-evaluate his friendship with Gansey with bi-tinted goggles, and yeah, there was totally something there.

But here’s the thing – he could handle the fact that he had some kind of feelings for Gansey once upon a time.

But there’s a huge fucking difference between _Gansey_ and _Ronan Lynch._

“You like you’re having some kind of aneurism, Parrish.”

“I’m…” he searches for a word that can even remotely explain what he is feeling without accidentally revealing the fact that he thinks he might be slightly attracted to him. “Tired,” which is not a lie.

Ronan nods in agreement. “Plus this party blows.”

Adam tries not to agree. “It’s Gansey’s birthday.”

“Right, and any other person’s 21st would involve drinking until you can’t see straight, but leave it to the Gansey’s to suck the fun out of birthdays.”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “Drinking until you can’t see straight doesn’t sound much better.”

“That’s because you don’t drink, Parrish, but _I_ would be having more fun, and that’s the important thing.”

Adam snorts and mirrors Ronan’s position, kicking his legs up and resting them on the chair beside Ronan. Ronan rubs his hand over his hair. Adam would have loved to have seen him with the curls Gansey had told him he used to have.

“Do you wanna go somewhere?” He asks. Ronan looks at him.

“It’s Gansey’s birthday,” he says mockingly.

“You’re the one who said the party sucked.”

“I believe I said it blows, actually.”

Adam smiles slightly.

“So, Parrish. Did you have anything in mind?”

* * *

“I’m driving. You’re drunk.”

Ronan flips him the keys.

Adam drives, and he keeps driving. Ronan doesn’t say anything, just kicks his feet up.

“How come _you’re_ allowed to put your feet on your dashboard?”

“Because it’s _my_ dashboard.”

“Because it’s my dashboard,” Adam mocks.

“Because it’s my dashboard,” Ronan says.

“You can’t mock me mocking you.”

“I thought we established that it was my car.”

“I’m driving it.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Are you upset because I’m going the speed limit or because I’m using the turn signal?”

“I have a turn signal?”

Adam can’t honestly tell if he’s joking or not.

* * *

“Gansey wants to know where we are.”

“I don’t know. I think we’re on the I-4.”

“Gansey says the I-4 is 132 miles long.”

“Do you think he knows that fact off by heart?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to ask him how long the I-95 is.”

A minute later –

“Gansey says fuck off.”

Fifteen seconds later –

“Also that it’s 382 miles long.”

Adam laughs, and Ronan glances at him, and then he laughs, too. Adam finds that the more he hears it, the more he wants to hear it.

God, he needs to get out of this car.

* * *

“McDonald’s, Parrish? Really?”

“Are your rich taste buds too refined for McDonald’s?”

Adam gets a burger and a medium soft drink. Ronan gets twenty chicken nuggets and a large milkshake. He watches in thinly veiled disgust as Ronan eats.

“What are you _doing?”_

Ronan gives him a funny look. “Eating.”

“No, what are you doing with your chicken nuggets?”

“This is just how I eat them,” he says with a shrug. Adam watches as he takes another one and eats all of the skin off of it, before dipping the inside chicken part in his sauce and eating it.

“That’s fucking weird,” Adam says. Ronan throws a chicken nugget at him.

* * *

By the time they decide to go back home, Adam is exhausted.

“Give me the keys.”

“No,” he objects. “You were drinking.”

“Like _four hours ago,_ Parrish, you’re about to fall asleep standing up, Jesus.”

Adam relents, handing Ronan his keys and climbing into the passenger seat. He takes off his jacket and balls it up against the window, and he is asleep almost as soon as Ronan pulls out of the parking lot.

* * *

“Parrish. Parrish. _Adam.”_

He lifts his head and stares at Ronan blearily. “What?”

“We’re back.”

Adam puts his head back down. “I’m just going to sleep in your car.” He isn’t really comfortable, but he can’t imagine going into the hotel and telling them his name and finding his hotel room when he is here and he is sleeping.

Ronan makes an angry noise. “Come the fuck on, Parrish.”

Adam does, wiping his eyes and leaving the car. He follows Ronan into the hotel, where Ronan tells the desk attendants both his name and Adam’s. The lady hands him the cards and Ronan leads him to the elevators.

“You’re 311,” Ronan says. “I’m next to you.” He hands Adam his card at the doors, as well as Adam’s bag, which he hadn’t even realized Ronan had had. Adam had completely forgotten about it. Ronan waits until Adam is safely inside before muttering _night_ and letting himself into his own room.

Adam dreams of fast cars and loud music and danger on his lips.

* * *

He wakes up at eight thirty, stumbles to the bathroom, brushes his teeth and changes into new clothes. Then he goes and bangs on Ronan’s door.  

“Ronan,” he says. “Get up.”

After thirty more seconds of nonstop knocking the door opens. Ronan gives Adam his best glare. “What?”

“We should leave soon.”

“It’s nine in the fucking morning, Parrish.”

“You said check out was at ten.”

“It is. Which means I have another hour to sleep.”

“How much sleep could you possibly need?”

“I don’t sleep much, Parrish, okay? Christ.”

He takes note of how exhausted Ronan looks. He wonders why he doesn’t sleep.

“Okay. Sorry. I’ll get you in an hour.”

Ronan closes the door.

Adam wanders down to the continental breakfast and finds Gansey and Blue.

“Hey,” he says, sitting next to Blue. “I’m sorry –”

Gansey shakes his head. “Don’t worry. I know it was kind of… we’ll have our own party back in Henrietta. I’m glad you came anyway. And I’m glad you’re getting along with Ronan.”

“That’s a word for it,” he says, buttering his toast. “I tried to wake him up just now and I thought he was going to throw me out the window.”

Gansey nods. “Ronan isn’t good in the mornings.”

“You say that as if Ronan is good at any other part of the day,” Blue says.

“He doesn’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, why?”

Gansey looks torn over whether he should answer or not. Eventually he just goes with, “Nightmares,” and says nothing else. Adam doesn’t pry.

A few minutes of inane chatter later and Ronan drops into the chair beside Gansey and steals a piece of his bacon. “You’re driving first,” he tells Adam.

They check out and say their goodbyes. Blue hugs him goodbye and she even hugs Ronan, who pats her on the head.

“We’ll see you back in Henrietta. We’ll plan another party this time. One where you two don’t ditch.”

Adam nods, fist bumps Gansey, and then gets into the car. Ronan climbs in the passenger seat, slamming it, and curls up against the window.

He wakes up two hours later in a much better mood. Well. In as good a mood as Ronan Lynch ever was.

“Hey Parrish.”

“What?”

“You said you have the whole weekend off, right?”

He’s not sure he’s going to like where Ronan is going with this.

“Yes,” he says slowly.

“Do you want to do this road trip the old fashioned way?”

He chances a quick glance at Ronan, whose grin is almost feral. And he doesn’t know why, but he nods.

* * *

“Okay, there’s one of those hills that drags your car up it.”

“Lame.”

“There’s a… drive in church?”

“What the fuck is that?”

“If I had to guess I’d say it was probably a church you could attend in your car. I’m not going to church. Wax museum?”

Ronan shudders. “Those things creep me out.”

“You’re very picky considering this was _your_ idea. There’s this weird island in Georgia that has tree faces everywhere.”

“Is there a picture?”

“You’re _driving.”_

“I can stop if you’d like.”

Adam rolls his eyes and passes Ronan his phone. Ronan raises his eyebrows. “That tree kind of looks like you, Parrish.”

Adam grabs the phone back. “It does not.”

“Yeah it does, it definitely does, are you sure you’re not part tree, or something? Do you want to go visit your tree brethren?”

“I fucking hate you,” Adam says, laughing. “We can go see the smallest church in America.”

“You seem awfully eager to see a bunch of churches for someone who doesn’t actually go to church.”

“There’s a self-kicking machine, although I’m willing to do that for you if you don’t want to stop. Oh, okay, got one – world’s largest peanut.”

“You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

Ronan grins. “Lead the way, Parrish.”

* * *

“Wow.”

“I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting.”

“I was expecting a giant nut.”

Adam snorts. “There’s another one that looks like Jimmy Carter near here.”

Ronan looks at him. “Are you trying to tell me that Georgia has two giant nuts?”

“Oh my God.”

“This is pretty nuts, huh, Parrish?”

“ _Ronan.”_

“I’m sending a picture of this to Gansey.”

“You mean you’re sending a picture of this nut to send to Dick?”

There’s that laugh again, and Adam is stunned by the realization that each time he has heard that laugh it has been because of _Adam._

He sends a picture of Ronan standing next to a giant peanut to Gansey.

* * *

A brief insight into the phone of Richard Gansey III:

A picture of Ronan next to a huge peanut with the caption _a pair of nuts for you, Dick._

A picture of Ronan next to a huge fire hydrant, looking annoyed, with the caption _I told him he couldn’t piss on it._

A picture of Adam next to a giant crab with his arms crossed, with the caption _Parrish has crabs hahahahahaha_

A picture of an unnecessarily large chest of drawers with the caption _Still not big enough to hold all your ugly clothing_ (Gansey is very offended by this – Blue doesn’t stop laughing for two minutes).

A picture of a huge chair with the caption _Not big enough to hold Ronan’s ego._

“At least they’re getting along,” Blue says.

* * *

It is late by the time Ronan pulls off the highway, driving through some small little town until he seems content, stopping in some field. Adam looks around wearily for a Private Property sign, but Ronan is out of the car almost immediately, and Adam can hear, feel, and see him jump up onto the hood of the car.

He follows after. In order to join Ronan on the hood they would be basically shoulder to shoulder. Adam jumps up to join him.

“What are we doing now?”

Ronan shrugs, leaning back against the windshield and bringing one of his knees up, his foot on the hood so he doesn’t slide off. “Needed to breathe,” he says. Adam mirrors his position and they both sit like for a little bit, shoulders pushed together.

“Ronan,” he eventually says. Ronan grunts to show he’s listening. “I know you’re not afraid of flying.”

Ronan doesn’t say anything for a while, and then he says, “Gansey said you don’t accept gifts.”

“I don’t. Or I didn’t. I don’t know. It’s complicated.” He doesn’t know how to explain to Ronan that he was never given a gift completely free of charge in his life, and he doesn’t know how to start now. But then Ronan says, “Gansey told me about your father, too, you know,” and he thinks maybe Ronan almost understands.

“I haven’t talked to my father for three years,” he says.

“So why did you say yes?”

Adam turns his head to look at him. “Why did _you_ say yes?”

“Because it’s fucking impossible to say no to Gansey,” he says, and Adam nods.

“It’s kind of annoying, isn’t it?” He is still staring at him, so he sees the side of Ronan’s mouth quirk.

They sit in silence for a bit more. Adam turns his head back to stare up at the stars. “What do you have nightmares about?” He asks.

Silence. He is too afraid to look over at Ronan, concerned that he had ruined this tentative moment of peace (and something a little more intense, if he’s being honest) that has settled down among them.

Finally Ronan says, “My father.”

Adam had already guessed that. He waits.

Then: “I saw him die.”

_Oh._

“He was into some shady shit,” Ronan says. “Declan never told me, and I never asked, because then I would have to talk to Declan.”

Adam vaguely recalls that Declan is one of Ronan’s brothers. “Sorry,” he says. It is empty, and it gets swallowed by the sky, but he doesn’t know what else he can say.

He looks at Ronan again. His eyes are closed, face turned to the sky. Adam studies his face, takes note of the way his eyelashes lie against his skin. There is tension in his body and Adam can feel it, lying next to him. Adam regrets asking.

He shifts so that his pinky is directly aligned with Ronan’s.

If you were to ask him, at that exact moment, what he was doing, he would have said _I don’t fucking know._ What he had thought he knew about Ronan Lynch is rewriting itself in his mind, Gansey’s angry best friend turning into something so much more complicated and beautiful, who was still haunted by the death of his father, who grinned at the thought of giant peanuts, who drove for over thirty hours just for Adam.

Ronan has stopped breathing. Adam goes to move his hand away but Ronan turns his over, capturing Adam’s fingers, and now it is Adam who is no longer breathing. Ronan’s hand is warm.

Adam closes his eyes and concentrates on their shoulders, Ronan’s hand, the car under his body, the stars above his head. He concentrates on Ronan’s breathing, matches his to the steady rhythm.

“Parrish,” Ronan says after a while. “I don’t really want to fall asleep in a random field. I don’t even remember what fucking state we’re in.”

Adam sits up. “Do you want me to drive?” He asks. Ronan slides off the car, and Adam slides off the car, and Ronan holds out his keys, and Adam takes them, and when Ronan kisses him gently, Adam kisses him back.

* * *

Ronan sleeps. Adam drives in silence and thinks.

The problem is that Adam was planning on leaving Henrietta forever. He had a shitty apartment that he went back to in the summers because he could work back at the garage for the four or so months that he was back. But once he graduated, he didn’t need Henrietta anymore.

And it’s ridiculous to be thinking this way after one kiss, but Adam has always had a plan, and he thinks Ronan Lynch might be the type of person who didn’t pay any attention to plans.

It is very early or very late, depending on how you looked at it, and Adam is exhausted, and he doesn’t really know how far from home he is, only that he wants to be home.

Ronan stirs, and Adam says what is on his mind before he loses his nerve. “Ronan. I’m not staying in Henrietta. Once I graduate, I’m going to New York, or D.C., or somewhere, I don’t know yet, but –”

“Jesus, Parrish,” Ronan says, voice thick with sleep. “We kiss once and you’re already asking me to move to New York with you? Little clingy, don’t you think?”

Adam lets out a breathy laugh. “Asshole. You know –”

“Adam,” Ronan says, quietly, and the way his first name sounds in Ronan’s mouth is shocking. “Let’s just get home. And then maybe we can talk about the summer, or something.”

Adam nods, yawns, and keeps driving.

* * *

When he pulls up outside St. Agnes he finally understands people who believe churches to be a holy place. He parks the car, nudges Ronan, and then gets out. He grabs his bag from the back seat, stretches, and then turns around to see Ronan leaning against the driver’s side door, hands in his pockets.

“Thanks, I guess,” Adam says. Ronan rolls his eyes and pulls Adam to him again, kissing him against the door of his car. Adam drops his bag so he can grip Ronan’s back. He barely knew Ronan Lynch, he tells himself; he could probably count the times they had met on one hand, and they had nothing in common, just Gansey, and Adam was leaving Henrietta, and Ronan was definitely not his type. Granted, he didn’t really know what his type _was,_ but he was almost certain it wasn’t guys like Ronan Lynch.

And yet here he is, pushed up against a car door, and he thinks it probably means something that he has spent almost two whole days with him and instead of killing each other they are here, bodies pushed together and Ronan’s hand in his hair.

Eventually he pulls away. “I’m going to fall asleep,” he says.

“Am I that bad at kissing?”

 _No,_ Adam thinks, but he isn’t going to give Ronan the satisfaction.

“Ronan –”

“All right, all right,” Ronan says, stepping away and letting Adam pick up his bag again. He kisses Ronan quickly.

“Call me, I guess,” he mutters.

“On _what?”_

Adam lets himself smile. “Figure it out, Lynch.”

Ronan shakes his head, but there is humour in his face, and something else, something unguarded that causes Adam’s stomach to flip, as if he were in fucking high school again, which is ridiculous. Ronan squeals away and Adam trudges upstairs, and he is asleep almost before he hits the mattress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr @pipermcgay


End file.
